Last Wednesday night, in the middle of a blazing heat wave, a quarter of a million people flocked to the funeral of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv. At the request of the deceased, no eulogies were delivered, but for the rest of the week, the Haredi press spoke of little other than the man, his life, and the vacuum left in his wake. Even the New York Times published a long obituary, and virtually every Jewish media outlet covered the story.
Who was Rav Elyashiv, as he was widely known, and why was this 102-year-old so revered?
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